(Preview) Two Paths for Apple and Its Users, More on Amazon and Advertising, OpenAI and 722 Mathematical Manuscripts

Andrew Sharp (0:00)

Hello, and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how are you doing?

Ben Thompson (0:19)

A little groggy, a little not super sharp, not super clear.

The only way to honor your baseball team drinking a lot of beer in the clubhouse is drink a lot of beer yourself. So we'll see how it goes. But I'm good.

Andrew Sharp (0:36)

Groggy but victorious. Triumphant here on Sharp Tech. You know what I love? I love that there was an entire first round series played in about six days. As somebody who's been through a lot of first round playoff series that take two and a half weeks in the NBA, I like the MLB keeping it nice and tight.

Ben Thompson (0:56)

Well, it is actually the second round because there was the wild card round first.

Andrew Sharp (0:59)

Oh, I don't count that. What? No, first real playoff series.

Ben Thompson (1:03)

It's actually one of the craziest things about the playoffs in baseball is it is over fast. And it has to be because part of the whole thing is you to be tested on your pitching court, right? And so you need to be playing every day. That's part of the whole thing of do you have a good team or not?

But the end result is the game is like you're super excited, you're there and then it's done. So my condolence to the Padres. I like that team a lot. We have a good friend who's a big Padres fan. Alas, someone has to lose if the good guys are going to win.

Andrew Sharp (1:33)

You had to do what you had to do. The Brew Crew taking care of business. Here we go.

Ben Thompson (1:39)

Speaking of fast last year, we lost 4 over the Dodgers. It was very ugly. It was over quick.

Andrew Sharp (1:45)

Talk about blinking. You missed it. Yes, indeed. I recall.

Ben Thompson (1:49)

We'll see what happens.

Andrew Sharp (1:49)

Well, nowhere to go but up from that performance. As for the show, we will kick things off with a handful of questions on Apple. On Monday, you wrote about news from Apple. Late last week, I believe it was Friday, the company announced, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that Mac users who genuinely wish to grant an app full disk access can only do so with very explicit user action.

And of that news, which was sort of ambiguous, you wrote, to say that I'm nervous about what Apple's solution will entail is a massive understatement. And that was part of a much larger article. We're not going to spend that much time on the article, but as a reader, I was curious, why specifically are you nervous and will Apple's decisions actually affect normal people or just you and other weirdos? What do you think?

Ben Thompson (2:43)

It's always funny how you get feedback on what you wrote. With you, it's like, we're not going to spend much time on that.

Andrew Sharp (2:49)

It's very technical. We're not coding to the metal here on the podcast.

Ben Thompson (2:55)

Unfortunately, you can't control me. We're going to be talking about the article.

Because I don't know, it's kind of a self-reflective period over not just the last few weeks, but the last few months, I think, for me and my relationship with computing and AI and agents and all these sorts of things. And the extent to which I am excited and enthused about this sort of stuff, I'm pretty sure it's coming across as I am very excited and very enthused. Are you getting that impression on the podcast?

Andrew Sharp (3:27)

I am, I am. And every now and then, I see tweets about guys in their 40s who may have AI psychosis. And I think of you as a friend.

Ben Thompson (3:35)

Absolutely. Like, I've been trying to be very sort of self-aware and be concerned, you know, do I have AI psychosis? And maybe sometimes just the answer is yes and being honest with yourself.

Andrew Sharp (3:46)

But yes, lean into it.

Ben Thompson (3:48)

It's fun. Like, for sure, it is fun in a way. I've called back to this being back in like the 90s and building your own PC. And like, understanding all this stuff works. And I think it's been, this is my current rationalization, justification, is I think it's been very positive for my work, because I do feel the extent to which I understand this stuff is much higher than it was even previously. And fortunately, I feel like a lot of my intuitions I had before were pretty accurate. But now just I think the depth has definitely gotten much greater. The more you get into this, understand the strengths, understand the weaknesses, what works, what doesn't, what is going to work, what is always going to be a challenge, etc. Anyhow, the reason why the Apple angle, though, is particularly interesting is, when I went to Apple University, the biggest challenge that I perceived with the Apple University concept, and I was there right when it first started. Joel Padone was there. I think he might still be there. But the concept was we're going to create this sort of program. Apple famously has this top 200 It's like they have this annual retreat. The top people in the company go there. It's not necessarily the top 200 by if you look at the org chart, it's the 200 people that actually matter in terms of building stuff. There might be some random guy that doesn't report to anyone. It's like, what's he doing over there? Actually, he understands the entire thing. It's all in his head. But the idea was, how do you maintain culture?